


No Excess Of Words

by NoTimeTeen



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-07-28 06:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7628326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoTimeTeen/pseuds/NoTimeTeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He is thought to be dead. Madge died in the bombing that destroyed 12. I realized soon after that I loved her." Katniss/Madge. Important references for the whole trilogy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing but the idea.  
> Please enjoy and comment.

_Are you, are you_  
_Coming to the tree_  
_Where they strung up a man they say murdered three._  
_Strange things did happen here_  
_No stranger would it be_  
_If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree._

 _Are you, are you_  
_Coming to the tree_  
_Where the dead man called out for his love to flee._  
_Strange things did happen here_  
_No stranger would it be_  
_If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree._

 _Are you, are you_  
_Coming to the tree_  
_Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free._  
_Strange things did happen here_  
_No stranger would it be_  
_If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree._

 _Are you, are you_  
_Coming to the tree_  
_Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me._  
_Strange things did happen here_  
_No stranger would it be_  
_If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree._

 _(Excerpt taken from Suzanne Collins'_ Mockingjay _, Chapter 9.)_

* * *

I.

In my sleep I shuffle and twist. I feel the blankets tangling around my body even as my feet carry me through the jungle. My memory recreates the warmness of the air, the moisture covering my skin and attaching to my clothes. Thick layers of green break as my arms swing at them.

 _This didn't happen_ , I think suddenly.

The arena fits. The moment fits. Even Finnick, shouting my name as he pursues me, fits. Flocks of jabberjays fly past me above the trees. "Katniss!" they shout. "Help me!" Is that voice the one that doesn't fit.

Deep inside me I know I shouldn't listen, I hear myself telling Finnick they're just mutts and Peeta telling me they need my family alive so that they can be interviewed. But the desperation in that voice is such that I can't just ignore it. It comes again and again.

In my anxious state I find I can't even place a name and a face to the voice for a moment. A soft voice broken into painful screeches. "Katniss!" they keep shouting. Blue eyes and blonde hair finally click together.

"Madge!" I sound desperate.

 _This definitely didn't happen_ , I think.

My legs keep moving. Even conscious that none of this is real I have to get to her. I need to tell her. I need her to understand, to see.

"Madge!"

I feel Peeta's hand circle my forearm and pull me into him. And it feels wrong. His body against mine, his hard arms around my shoulders, his hoarse voice repeating my name. All of it. It's just wrong. "No," I tell him. I have to get to her. "Let me go!" I trash against him and claw his arms off of me. I need her to know.

I keep calling out to her. "Madge, where are you!"

_Where are you, Madge. Please. I need you to see. I need you to know._

And I fall down, mumbling to myself. "Please," I say. "Please understand." I embrace my body as my tears start pouring out. Her voice now surrounds me.

I know I should be strong. I know all of this is pointless. She's gone now. That's all there is to it. But there's so much I regret. So much I wish I could change. "Madge," I keep whispering, my voice weak.

I stand up and realize where I am: a clearing back in the woods. Back home. The demonic bird is looking up at me from where it stands near my feet. Its head tips to the right. "Why did you leave me, Katniss?" it spits out through its beak.

More tears spill down my face. I want to take it in my hands and break its neck. I want it to never speak such foul words again while using her voice. I want her voice to never be so shattered again. I want to take it with me to District 13. I want her to speak to me every night even if it's just to throw all that to my face. "Please, Madge." I kneel down. "I'm sorry. Please." And as I embrace it my arms close around empty air.

It's gone. She's gone. _It's now over_ , I think.

Except it's not.

There's still the pressure in my chest and the tears in my eyes. There's still this longing. This excruciating longing.

Emptiness.

_I'm really just sorry, Madge. Sorry I never knew. Sorry we never spoke. I'm sorry I never knew how much I'd miss you if you ever were gone. I wish you knew..._

I open my eyes and she's standing in front of me. It's as if I was walking under the sun after months of continuous snowstorms. I suddenly realize how much I have missed looking at her elegant face. Her straight nose. The golden hair falling down to her shoulders.

Madge smiles and opens her mouth. However, she doesn't speak. I lean forward to embrace her and, finally, I feel her solid body inside the circle of my arms.

Her singing starts, " _Are you, are you  
Coming to the tree..._ "

II.

_...Where they strung up a man they say murdered three..._

It's not her body, though. It's Prim that's against me when my eyes open. They're wet. My face moist with my tears.

My arms go slack around her. I'm suddenly invaded by the urge to escape her. To run from here. From my own thoughts. This is the only thing with which Prim can't — won't — help me. I'm not even sure, as a matter of fact, if there's a way anyone could help me.

I somehow manage to crawl out of bed without waking her up. In no time I'm hugging my knees on the floor of one of my odd little hidding places. A closet filled with needless school supplies. My breath quickens as I feel my body rock back and forth. I close my eyes.

_My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. District 12 was destroyed because of me. Madge didn't survive..._

I'd been advised to repeat some of that. As if it would actually help me. My body convulses violently as I feel more tears on my face.

The dream's still too fresh in my mind. I can still see Madge's face in front of mine. The soft curve of her jaw, the smooth surface of her forehead... I wish I had a lantern with me so that its light could burn my retinas and the face they're perceiving with them. For a second I consider looking around the closet to see if there's something I can use. I dismiss it. I'm much too content having that picture burning at the back of my eyelids.

I hate looking at her because she makes me remember. It's me the reason she's dead. The reason so many died. District 12 is gone. Madge with it.

Flickers of hope still live in me. Her father was mayor. He could've known. They could've run away. Away to the Capitol. She could be there right now, hugging her mother. Afraid. But I know she's not. Gale saw her house fall down as he fled. He said he did. From far away. "No trains had come or gone", he said. I let it live.

She's alive. She's alive, and when I see her I'll tell her. I reassure myself. _It's not over, Katniss._ For a moment I wonder. What makes me be relieved? Is it the fact that she isn't dead, that her death is not my fault? Is it the fact that somehow she'll know, before she dies?

She's dead, though, and all of that is just futile.

I love looking at her because she makes me remember. The wet fabric covering her shoulder as I cried against it, warm days under the sun, amid the woods, her arms around my body.

She was the first friend I ever had. No, she was not. She was Madge, my Madge. She was no one and everybody. The person whose presence never bothered me. The only person with whom no excess of words were needed. I have tried to demerit her memory in an attempt to make it less painful. That's also been futile.

I want to stop looking at her because I killed her. I want to keep looking at her because I'm dreading the thought that at some point I won't be able to remember what she looked like. She came and is now gone, leaving me regret and sadness. Dead hopes. Doubt. What would it have been like?

When the door opens is Gale the one that pulls me to my feet. "Hey, Catnip," he says. It's obvious how taken aback he is by my state.

I haven't cried for hours now, but I know my eyes must be as red as if I'd rubbed the tears out just minutes ago. "Hey, Gale."

"Thought I'd find you here. Prim's angry... or something. I wouldn't know," he adds, a slight smirk on his lips, "never seen her angry."

He's too close to me. I push him away and fall back on some cardboard box. He crouches.

"Hey." I tip my head away from the hand he's trying to run down my cheek. A sigh escapes his lips. "Is it Peeta?"

 _Similar enough_ , I think.

I nod.

It's not enough for him to see me suffering, he has to remind me of Peeta, too.

My head starts hurting as I remember him, the boy with the bread. The baker's son. I feel his lips on mine inside a cave, making him fall on cold snow, his warm body enveloping mine, the burned bread he threw my way all those years ago... And it's still not enough.

Another death. Another one of my killings.

...warm soft lips pressed against my own, the smooth surface of a hand lulling me to sleep...

_I wish you'd tell me you know, that you understand. But now you're gone and there's so much I'll have to live with. So much to regret — My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12..._

_So was hers_. It invades my thoughts, her face. Her hands, her body against mine. Her eyes staring at me.

I'm losing it. I think I'm losing it. I voice my thoughts and Gale tries to talk me out of myself. But there's too much keeping me here. Peeta and Madge. Johanna and Annie. The baker and his witch wife. The mayor and her sisterless wife. And so many fatherless kids. Motherless kids.

"It's still likely she'll be disoriented from time to time, but with careful surveilance and compromise from her she should be fine being left alone for periods of time." My mother nodded at that and said she'd take good care of me, not leave me out of her sight, have me next to her all day if needed.

Now I wonder if I wouldn't be better strapped down to a bed.

"...remember?" Gale asks. His face floats in front of mine, but he's careful enough not to touch me. "Remember the song. 'The Hanging Tree'," he tells me. "You taught it to me, remember?" I remember. Silent day under our rock. Back at our rock ledge overlooking the valley. That was a very long time ago."You told me the man wanted her to come die with him. That dying would be better for her than to live in such an awful world.

"Peeta's better off now. He's home, with his family." He's so wrong. So wrong. He thinks he was just the ally I had to kiss, share the triumph with. But he made me feel alive. Made me feel like something actually mattered. As he does himself.

But she made me _be_ alive. And _she_ was the something, the someone that actually mattered.

And I saw it too late.

We head to the hospital where I'm expecting they'll drug me back to sleep. And I dread and cherish the image of her face plaguing my dreams again. A whirlwind of thoughts starts invading me.

"He's fine, you know?" I'm on a bed now, feeling the heaviness drown my thoughts. Driving me away from the pained expression on his face and the plain tone of his voice. "He's fine now, being where he is."

I make one last attempt. I try to convince myself it doesn't matter. She's death, I'm alive. I try to put a name to what I've lost. Our fingers interlaced on a bed of grass, her soothing words pulling me out of a restless sleep. Secrets built and kept in the woods. But what's the use? Whatever existed between us is gone.

 _No, it's not_ , I think. _It's not gone and neither is she._

Because what I lost when she died is much more than what I would lose if Gale died, much more than what I lost when Peeta died — if he's dead, that is. What I lost when she died is something neither makes me feel, however close they get. The truth is I can't even name it.

And it's now, as I'm falling under the weight of whatever drug they gave me, that I realize that what existed between Madge and I was what made me survive for months after my first Games, when Gale had to work at the mines and Peeta wouldn't even look at me. When one day at her home she insisted I took her out to the woods. Where many days later, weeks later, out by the lake...

Gale's drifting away from me, fading behind the fog that fills my head.

_My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He is thought to be dead. Madge died in the bombing that destroyed 12. I realized soon after that I loved her._

III.

_...Where the dead man called out for his love to flee..._

...Mockingjays answered with the same four notes I'd just whistled. Rue's four notes. Her soft voice filled my ears. "Even whistling you shush them up," Madge told me.

I placed a hand on rough bark as I waited for her to surface into the clearing. When she did her eyes were amused, but earnest. "Can't take responsability for how they act," I chuckled.

Earnestness gone, she smirked. "They can't wait for you to sing."

It was refreshing hanging out with Madge. After I came back everybody either hated me — Peeta — , were too busy to be with me — Gale, Prim, my mother — , were afraid of me, or were always vigilant in case I had a mental breakdown because of something they said. Madge didn't mind. She spoke as she always did. I guess she expected I could deal with it if she ever said something that affected me.

My head shook. I signaled her to follow. After another fifteen minutes of falling over roots and looking suspiciously over her shoulder at any unknown sound, Madge finally asked for some rest.

"It's nice out here, huh?" she said, looking around her. A convinient clearing.

"Quiet." I nodded. No excess of words was required with her.

I sat against a tree as she gazed around and above us. "Thought you'd like it."

"Oh, I do." Her eyes met mine, wrinkling at the edges as she smiled. "It's somehow better than not being able to listen to you play the piano."

I huffed. "Attempt to play it, more like." She didn't bother denying it. "What's with your mother and her headaches?" It's until I finished that I realized I hadn't been too nice with the question.

Madge didn't seem to mind, though. "It's been a long time since I last asked. It's complicated. That's all I know." She sounded calm but serious. As if she wouldn't appreciate it if I continued down that road.

"It's a shame we couldn't be at you house."

"Well, I don't know." Madge shrugged. Smiled at me. "I finally convinced you to bring me out here."

"You wanted to come out here?" I asked. "To the woods?"

"I want you to sing." She gazed pointedly at me. "But coming out here is nice too."

"I can sing just fine at your house."

Madge came over to sit next to me. She looked at me sideways, and her eyes had that intensity that I'd been noticing since I'd come back. "Not with my mother two floors above... Still not enough to not affect her head."

I was quiet for a time. "I don't particularly want to sing right now."

Madge just nodded. We sat in silence for a very long time. Our shoulders rubbing together. Then she spoke. "I'm really happy you came back, Katniss." Her smile fell a little when I turned to her. Her voice went low. "I don't think I said it before. But I really am."

It's not something I'd been told before. By anyone. I didn't know how to answer, or if I should. So I didn't. Instead, I said, "Thank you for coming to say goodbye, Madge."

"I imagine you thought no one would want to say goodbye, huh?"

"Well..." I hesitated. "The truth is, I never thought you and I were so close. Until you came and gave me the pin..."

"I never told you—" It was as if Madge had caught herself saying something she shouldn't. She started again. "I wanted you to have something to remember me by..."

 _There she goes again,_ I thought. Since I came back from the Games I knew there was something Madge wanted to say to me. However, it was as if every time she was about to say it she caught herself mid-sentence and started talking about something else.

"I don't need it now, though." I presented to her the mockingjay pin, but she just closed my hand with hers and pushed it away.

"It's yours now, Katniss. I want you to have it."

I couldn't hold back the wide smile that stretched my lips.

After another long silence I stood up. Told her we should be getting back. "You're not that quick and it's getting late." Making small talk, we made our way back to the fence and to her house. The sky was slighty dark by the time we got there. We said our goodbyes. "Maybe we could do this again sometime, Madge," I said.

For some reason she blushed. "I hope so." Then she leaned forward and gave my cheek a soft kiss.

Something happened then, though. Either I moved my face unconsciously and without realizing it, or she did, but the next thing I knew was that her kiss landed halfway on my lips. Just at the edge. They were surprisingly warm, soft. Hotness spread inside my stomach as though I was about to go on stage again for an interview with Caesar Flickerman. She pulled away and didn't mention it. And neither did I.

 _Just an accident_ , I dismissed it. Still, I couldn't help remembering the first kiss she'd given me, weeks ago. I'd noticed how warm her lips were then, too. How soft. I distractedly ran my fingers over the place where our lips had touched and continued to do it until I was home.

The time goes on...


	2. Part II

_Deep in the meadow, under a willow_  
A bed of grass, a soft green pillow  
Lay down your head, and close your sleepy eyes  
And when again they open, the sun will rise.

 _Here it's safe, here it's warm_  
Here the daisies guard you from every harm  
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true  
Here is the place where I love you.

 _Deep in the meadow, hidden far away_  
A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray  
Forget your woes and let your troubles lay  
And when again it's morning, they'll wash away.

 _Here it's safe, here it's warm_  
Here the daisies guard you from every harm  
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true  
Here is the place where I love you.

 _(Excerpt taken from Suzanne Collins'_ The Hunger Games _, Chapter 18.)_

* * *

IV.

_...Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free..._

...the time goes on in my drug-induced unconsciousness...

I kept seeing more of Madge as the weeks passed. I went to her house, or she came to mine, or we went out to the woods. She particularly liked it when we went out. She said she'd always wanted to see what it was like out there.

"When we were younger," she said once, "everybody knew you went hunting with your father. Out to the woods. You were fearless."

The accidental touch of our lips soon became a forgotten accident, and the kisses in the cheek became our standard gesture for saying goodbye. Madge's intense stares were something that bothered me constantly, as well as the unfinished sentences.

Another thing that became pretty common were her allusions to my "beautiful" singing — I hadn't yet agreed to sing for her. "I still remember you standing in front of the class once a week to sing whatever song the teachers wanted."

Those things she said sometimes... things that reminded me of Peeta. I wasn't sure if it bothered me the same when she said them than when he did. There was always the same appreciative quality to her voice when she spoke of that. The same Peeta's voice had. It didn't seem to bother me as much, to tell the truth. I would often find something in her eyes, too, that I liked to think was appreciation. But I could never be sure. Madge's eyes had become so intense since I returned...

One particular day still stands out — for obvious reasons, too.

We were out in the woods again. I had decided to show Madge the lake, maybe teach her how to swim. For reasons even I didn't understand I was nervous. It was the first time I went there since before the Games. The first time in about a year.

We got there early because I really had the intention of getting into the water. We didn't, though. I couldn't. Going back there being the new person I was broke something in me. I had been there with my father. An innocent child. Now I was a victor — a murderer.

I couldn't bear the sight of the water. I fell down to my knees and completely broke down. And Madge was there in a second. Holding me. Her arms embraced me and I could feel her heartbeat through her chest. Against my face.

"It's okay, Katniss," she whispered. "Let it out," she said.

I cried myself to sleep. The air moving the trees reminded me of my first nights at the arena. The singing mockingjays brought Rue back from the death. The grass against my naked arms, against my face, replicated the numbness of the tracker jacker poison. Madge's arms around my shoulders gave me the protection Peeta's did in the cave.

When I awoke it was to the soft feeling of her fingers playing with my own. Soothing words were whispered into my ears. Madge's arms were still around my body. Her voice is what pulled me out of my sleep completely. She started to sing.

" _Are you, are you_  
Coming to the tree  
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three."

I was astonished. How does she know that song, I wondered. There was no imaginable way for her to know it. Her father was the mayor. Had been since we were little kids. Did he allow those songs to be sung at his place? I knew — anyone could realize it — that Mayor Undersee wasn't the strictest man in the district. But for her daughter to know such a song...

" _Are you, are you_  
Coming to the tree  
Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free."

My eyes opened. My vision of the lake was obscured by the layers of blond hair that fell upon my face. Her voice was beautiful. It was really something. The mockingjays wouldn't shut up, like Peeta said they did with me. They sang over her voice, accompanying it. Her words unfolded amid the melody of the past stanzas.

I was brought back to my childhood. To singing it with my father walking around this very lake. Back at the arena when Rue's small frame pressed tightly against my own at the top of a tree. To the day I volunteered, to the embrace my mother and Prim shared with me. To feeling Madge kissing my cheek the same day. To feeling the itch left on my lips after she accidentally laid her kiss on them...

" _Strange things did happen here_  
No stranger would it be  
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree," she finished. For a while I just felt her breathing slowly. My arms were around her waist, and though I suspected she already knew I tightened my hold slightly to let her know I was awake. She whispered, "I heard your father singing it. Years ago."

"Oh?" I frowned. It must have been so many years ago.

"Before my father was mayor. I loved it on the spot. The melody. I knew it was your father even then. The song reminded me of you." She sighed deeply. "It still does."

I pulled my head from beneath hers and moved so that I could look at her. Her eyes were intense again. Maybe it was due to my emotional state, or due to the way she sang, or because of the tone of her voice. Maybe it was due to all of that and more. I was finally able to put a name to what I'd been seeing in her eyes since the Games. _No_ , I caught myself thinking. _Since before the Games. Before she came to give me the pin and kiss my cheek._

"The other day—" I stopped. My voice was raspy and broken. Again I tried. "The other day, when you kissed me goodbye."

No excess of words was ever needed when talking to her.

Her eyes left mine. She knew what I was talking about. "I'm sorry, Katniss." Her blue eyes watered slightly. "So sorry."

I wouldn't listen to her. I didn't want to. I found myself in the state in which I can't control my actions. Not because they go out of control or because I react faster than I can realize it. I can't control them because I don't want to. Because I trust what I'm about to do will lead me to the right place. Volunteering, a bed of flowers, a fistful of berries.

"It wasn't an accident," I interrupted her mumbling, "was it?"

A tear rolled down the side of her face. She shook her head. "Ever since you volunteered, Katniss, I've wanted to—" Her voice was so sad. "To—" Hopeless. "But I don't know how you feel about me. I mean," she adds as another tear escapes her eye, "you didn't even think we were friends, I bet."

I kissed her. I kissed her right on the lips. Right there, laying on the grass at the place that meant so much to me as a child and now as an adult.

She pushed me away, though. "Don't do that," she whispered. "Don't kiss me." She looked into my eyes.

"Madge." They were intense as ever.

"Don't, Katniss." Her lips went up slightly at the edges. She was blushing. "Don't kiss me unless you mean it."

I stared as she sat up and gazed out to the lake. And for a long time.

Neither spoke. I dried my eyes and sat up next to her. She let her tears fall, just a few more. Then she let them so the wind would dry her face.

"You can't imagine what it was like for me." I started when she spoke again. Her voice was so firm. "To not being able to tell you when I went into the room the day you left. To see you being beautiful — being someone else. To see you enter the arena and kill. And cry and kiss... kiss Peeta. To just watch." She turned to me, but wasn't sad anymore. "And when you came back you were the same. Different, but the same. To me, at least."

Another silence. I couldn't think of anything to say. But I didn't feel there was anything to be said. This was Madge's moment. I felt she didn't want me to interrupt, and I knew she wasn't finished.

I was warm. Calm. Happy. For some reason I felt happy. It wasn't that she had said it. The moment she spoke those words I realized I'd known how she felt for years. What I felt was the real mystery.

I sat there and watched her lips until they started moving again. And I realized I wanted to feel them again. I remembered the soft warmness of them. The day of the reaping. The day of the accident. I remembered the discreet taste of strawberries that filtered my mouth that day when I came back and informed my mother I was home.

I realized I'd been craving the feeling of her lips ever since.

"Katniss." When she turned to me again I shut her up with my lips against hers.

V.

_...Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me..._

"...said they were stopping it," Prim says. "They'll let her sleep and let the drugs run out eventually..."

We went back to our houses after that. I imagine neither of us really knew how to react to my actions. But when she opened her front door and was about to go in I kissed her again. And the next day I kissed her when I met her, too.

And so it went.

We were nothing. To be honest, I never felt sure what it was that made me want to kiss Madge. But I knew the kisses were nothing like the ones I gave Peeta, or the one I gave Gale. Whenever I kissed her I was left wishing it hadn't stopped. I was left wishing I could kiss her until I could figure out what I felt like. What I felt for her.

It was all pretty casual. One minute we'd be talking — she'd be insisting I sing to her constantly — and the next she'd lean into me and kiss me. And then we would be back to our conversation. I'd greet her with a kiss. She'd kiss me goodbye. We went out to the woods a lot. She loved the lake. She loved letting me fall sleep with my head on her lap, her hand running through my hair.

We discussed my Games — how I'd hated who I had become in order to win — , Peeta, Gale — how they both loved me but I seemingly wasn't able to develop real feelings for them — , Prim and my mother, and her parents. The Victory Tour. We talked about the Capitol's discomfort with my being alive. We talked about my father and my childhood. How I'd become what she called "fearless" because I didn't really have a choice.

"I wish we had known each other back then," she had said. "I would've helped you."

"So many things would've been different." Madge's head had been on my lap. I was running my fingers over her cheeks.

"You wouldn't've survived the Games, though," she said.

There really weren't topics we wouldn't discuss. For which I'm glad now. Somehow I know I was able to know as much of her as I could.

A few weeks before the Victory Tour we stopped seeing each other as often. It had been her idea. "You'll be gone for two weeks or so, and who knows what's gonna happen with you and Peeta."

As I said, we were nothing really. Not seeing her almost every day was weird at first — she decided we'd see each other only once a week — but after the first two weeks I forced myself to get used to it. Still, I missed her.

The Victory Tour came and I returned scared and engaged to Peeta. Madge was upset with me. Anxious about my foolish idea of leaving District 12 — which, when offered, she promptly declined.

We agreed not to see each other again for a while.

The last time we were able to be alone was a few days after the Quarter Quell was announced. I already knew I was going back in the arena. I'd been able to free myself of Haymitch, Peeta and their Career regime by successfully feigning a grave case of the flu. After climbing out the kitchen window I went running straight for the mayor's house.

And when Madge opened the door it was as if I had just heard the conditions for the Quarter Quell. As if I'd just learned I was going to die. She had barely made the subtlest of movements of opening her arms when I was against her. My head in the crook of her neck.

"Oh, Katniss." She enveloped me and walked me inside blindly. Soon both of us were crying.

We couldn't go out to the woods, we couldn't go to my house — either the new one or the old one — but here I felt safe. Inside the circle of her arms. She dragged me to her bedroom after a while and we spent the day drifting in and out of sleep. Waking up every time to find the other's calm face. To lock our eyes together.

She sang "The Hanging Tree" while staring deep into my eyes. Her lips touching mine repeatedly as the words flew out of her mouth. When she finished there was a little smile on both our faces.

"Listen to it," she said. "Listen to what it says."

I blinked, confused. "He doesn't want her to live. The world's too bad for her to live it. Better to be dead." I tried to think of a reason why she would want me to unravel the meaning. "Is that it?" I frowned.

Madge chuckled, then gazed at me with such adoration. "Katniss." She pecked my lips with hers. "You young fool. You young, clueless fool," she said, amused. Her head shook slowly as she contemplated me. "You think you're so right about things and yet you're so ignorant of them. Of you." Her fingertips traced my face, my arms. Her frame was pushed tightly into mine. "The world's an awful place for her to live in because he's not there to make it bearable."

She stood up from the bed and went to sit in front of a mirror. I watched the reflection of her sad eyes look down at her hands. "That's what I thought it was going to be like. When you first left," she whispered. "What it'll be like when you go."

I didn't hesitate. I went to her and kissed her, as deep as I could. And later I hugged her for a long time. Her small body convulsed constantly as she cried. And I cried because she cried. Because, though I probably hadn't realized it at the time, I'd discovered I would feel the same as she during the last days of my life. It would be so hard for me to survive without her close, knowing for sure I'd die. Knowing for sure how much she'd suffer without me to be with her.

Before I could stop it — or even notice it — I started to sing. Her reaction was immediate. Her body relaxed in my arms. Her hug tightened. Her breathing calmed. She sighed contentedly.

" _Deep in the meadow, under the willow_  
A bed of grass, a soft green pillow  
Lay down your head, and close your sleepy eyes  
And when again they open, the sun will rise."

A lullaby. The lullaby I sang to Rue. I sang to her when she was dying, hoping she would find better things when she woke up. Now, though, I was the one that was dying. I was the one with the spear stuck in my stomach. But still I sang to Madge.

Because Madge was the one that needed hope.

" _Deep in the meadow, hidden far away_  
A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray  
Forget your woes and let your troubles lay  
And when again it's morning, they'll wash away."

And then, had she listened, had she survived, had things not gone the way they did, she would've been able to keep going. To survive. She would've married, had children. Her father was important. She could've ended up living at the Capitol.

She could've been happy.

" _...Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true  
Here is the place where I love you._"

I feel glad I chose to sing that song. Particularly because of that last verse, and the fact it repeats. It's the closest I ever came to realizing what I felt for her while she was alive. Besides, she didn't ask me whether I meant it or not, and I wasn't about to tell her I didn't fully. I'm glad I told her I loved her, even if at the time I didn't know it. At least I could give her that.

We fell asleep a long time after that. When we woke up the sky was already dark. I cried util I had no more tears to shed. I didn't know when I would be able to see her again.

Our last kiss was soft. Slow. Filled with emotion. Mine and hers — my confusion, her love. And when last I saw her it was through her window. The darkness kept me from seeing her tears, but not her smile. Not the love in her eyes.

The world regains its shape...

VI.

...The world regains its shape. My mother and Prim. They come and go as my mind starts working again. Slowly.

Gale and Peeta, Finnick and Johanna. They all come to my half sleep. They whisper calming lies and harsh realities. "You destroyed District Twelve," they shout. "You left us to die." "They want to let you go see Twelve. See if you get better with that." "You don't even want to live, brainless."

 _But how could I_ , I want to answer.

The drugs run out eventually and the world is intermittent. Indefinite. My intervention in it non-existent. Two weeks in District Thirteen now, they say. Two weeks of no Twelve, no Madge and no will to live. I feel full consciousness approach me. I want to escape it. Flee from it.

My hands stretch out, clutching the last shreds of clarity the morphling — or whatever other thing they're giving me — can provide. I pull myself into my head again. Fall asleep again. See Madge again.

"You young fool," she repeats.

The dark empty space makes her edges sharp. She's so warm as I touch her. So warm. "Madge," I say. "Please say you know," I beg of her. "Please let me follow."

She turns and runs away. Away to the jungle. Past jabberjays and monkeys, I follow. Past Peeta and I at the beach, past the cave he and I made ours, past Rue's bed of flowers. Past the woods and past the lake. Past the mine where my father died, the fence where Gale and I kissed. Past District 12 and all we've experienced there. Out of life and time where she now lives.

Mockingjays sing four notes. Rue goes from tree to tree. Cato hunts for Clove, Foxface following close behind. Tributes and rebels run around. Slaves and masters. Victims, they all.

Past all that until all I see is Madge running ahead of me.

"Madge," I call out. My legs fail me. I fall to my knees. I cry.

_My name is Katniss Everdeen — Here it's safe, here it's warm — I am seventeen years old — Where the dead man called out for his love to flee — My home is District 12 — Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free — I was in the Hunger Games — Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true — District 12 was destroyed because of me — Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me — Madge didn't survive — Here is the place where I love you — I realized soon after that I loved her._

"Katniss." Her soft voice awoke me. Though it didn't. The blank landscape of my mind spread around her, around us. "You young, clueless fool." She was smiling.

"Madge. It's over." I hug her. "I can't, Madge," I whisper against the skin of her neck. "I can't go on without you."

"Of course you can," she whispers. "You said it yourself. You sang that song. Hope is for the living as much as it is for the dead."

I lean back and look at her. Oh, how I loved her. "I'm sorry I never told you I loved you, Madge. I'm sorry for so many things."

Her hand under my chin lifts my head. "You did. More than once. Others know when you love them, Katniss. I did, in particular." No excess of words was ever needed between us.

"I never knew how you felt until you kissed me."

Madge chuckles. "It took you years to realize how much Peeta loved you even though everybody else could see it. I wouldn't say you're very observant of those things in others... Or in yourself, as a matter of fact."

I smile. A sudden thought occurs to me. "Are you really here, Madge? With me?"

"I _am_ you."

Tears run down my face. "Remember the song? How you said you wouldn't live if I died?" She nods. "I don't think I want to live. I want to die. To be with you. I want it all to be over."

"But it wouldn't be, Katniss." The way she said my name. So familiar yet so foreign. Now I knew she wasn't her. She wasn't Madge. "Things would still happen."

"I wanted to die when I knew you did."

For a second Madge is silent. This forgery of Madge. Then she sighs. "You did die, Katniss. Part of you did. _I_ did." Unreal tears drip out of her eyes. "And I'm something you'll have learn to live with. You can't leave me behind, but you have to start living again."

Her voice starts singing "The Hanging Tree". It echoes all around us. And the piece of my mind that's standing in front of me cries as I do at the soft sound.

"She wouldn't like seeing me like this," I whisper. In front of me, it just nods resignedly. I turn around and walk away.

It was right, the forgery. Part of me died when I knew Madge had died. Just as part of me died when I knew Peeta hadn't been rescued. But I'm not dead. And, as it seems, I won't be for a long time. There's so much anchoring me here. My mother, Prim, Gale. The faint glimmer of hope that says Peeta's still alive.

I won't get over Madge. Ever. That's impossible. _But I'll have to find a way to live with it_ , I figure. The same way she would've learned to survive without me. I'll just have to carry her death with me for as long as I live. Not because it was apparently caused by my own actions, but because of what she meant to me. What she turned me into.

If Peeta died, or Gale or my mother or Prim, I'd have to learn to live with that as well. No matter how painful it would be to accept it at first. I would have to accept it, to find a way to keep going. Whenever I remember my father's death I go back to it and feel sad. But then I look at myself and realize that, even if he's dead, he lives in me. In my silent steps as I hunt, in the cautious way in which I approach people, in the love I feel for my family.

In me I see Madge. In how I opened up to people as I had never done it before, to Peeta, to the deceased victors. In how I got to know what I like to see in the people that loves me. In how I liked kissing her without feeling I owed it to her. In how I was able to realize what it is I felt, feel, for her, what I feel for Peeta, for Gale, for my mother. How I was able to open up my feelings to myself.

And I now can see that indeed there's no way I'll forget Madge, because the moment I met her, the moment I kissed her, the moment I knew I loved her, she changed me, and I changed her. Just the way Peeta changed me when he gave me the bread, and when he said he loved me in front of the whole of Panem. Or Gale, when we met in the woods and started hunting together. My mom when she, for better or worse, went sick after my father died and let me in charge of our family.

So, Madge is in me, and what we were and what we had is now part of me. Part of my past. And part of my future as well. Even if she's dead.

"Katniss," my sister calls. Madge fades behind me. Her voice stops. I hear a door closing softly, a few feet away. A hand caresses my forehead. "Hey," she says when I open my eyes. "You've been out for a while, you know?" I barely have time to smile.

"You're awake. Good." The door closes again. President Coin walks stiffly until she's standing in front of my bed. "One option has been considered regarding—"

I interrupt. With my father and Madge in my head, thinking how it all seems to have been my fault, I say, "If you let me go see Twelve, I might consider being your Mockingjay."

Time for closure.

Fin.

* * *

...His greetings give me the courage to ask, "Did they find anyone in there?"

"Whole family. And the two people who worked for them," Thom tells me.

Madge. Quiet and kind and brave. The girl who gave me the pin that gave me a name. The girl who gave me the rest of my life to survive a war. To free a country. I swallow hard. Wonder if she'll be joining the cast of my nightmares tonight. Shoveling ashes into my mouth. "I thought maybe, since he was the mayor..."

"I don't think being the mayor of Twelve put the odds in his favor," says Thom.

I nod and keep moving, careful not to look in the back of the cart. There's still an image. One that prevailed all through Thirteen and Eight and Two and the Capitol. One that will remain until the day I die.

Madge. The girl who gave me hope when I had none, when I wanted none. The girl that, in death, will still keep me alive.

And I know she'll come into my dreams, not my nightmares...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked the story add them to your favorites or whatever, so that I know anyone liked it at all. I'm experimenting a bit with some idea I had, so I might write a bit more for the HG fandom. Be aware if you expect it. The first chapter I've ready feels like the most promising piece of my life. Who knows? I might actually apply myself to it. (Though I wouldn't promise anything. It wouldn't be the first time I lose my initial enthusiasm over a story after the first few days of writing it.)


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